Hey, Jenny, I’ve got your number! And I’m going to dial 867-5309 into this very nice phone-style matrix keypad. This keypad has 12 buttons, arranged in a telephone-line 3×4 grid. It’s made of plastic with sturdy plastic buttons. The keys are connected to a matrix so you only need 7 microcontroller pins (3-columns and 4-rows) to scan through the pad.
There’s a great Matrix Keypad Arduino library that should work great with this item with minor adjustments. It’s basically a sturdier version of our Membrane 3×4 Matrix Keypad and comes with 7 header pins pre-soldered on for easy plugging. Starting from the left there are three column pins, and then to the right are the four row pins.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
